


Beneath the Holy Trees

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Afterlife, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Corruption, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Demons, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Future Fic, Going to Hell, Heaven, Heaven & Hell, Hurt Caleb Widogast, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sex, Injury Recovery, Kissing, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Panic Attacks, Recovery, Rescue Missions, Resurrection, Speculation, Temporary Character Death, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 08:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16850608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: Mollymauk Tealeaf had run away to hell.Avernas, to be exact; destination: the river Styx that cut through the heart of it where the souls of the damned went to bubble and boil and churn until they clawed their way out as a fresh batch of demons.But not all of those souls were damned by their own choice.(Or, Caleb gets killed by a Narzugon’s lance, struck down and killed and his soul sent down to hell by the curse of its infernal power. Molly makes an escape from his own afterlife and mounts a rescue mission.)





	Beneath the Holy Trees

**Author's Note:**

> If DND Beyond weren't cowards they'd brag about how good Mordenkainan's Tome of Foes is good for Critical Role-based plot bunnies.
> 
> But I guess I'll just have to handle that particular side of the advertising myself. We can't expect Sam to do everything.

Mollymauk Tealeaf had run away to hell.

Avernas, to be exact; destination: the river Styx that cut through the heart of it where the souls of the damned went to bubble and boil and churn until they clawed their way out as a fresh batch of demons. 

But not all of those souls were damned by their own choice. 

He wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d slipped past one of the guardians of Arborea with a lie and a kiss and cut his way down into the Nine Hells with his scimitars glowing with radiant light. He’d be caught eventually, of course, and he just hoped it was by his own jailers rather than the locals. 

Molly wasn’t eager to join Caleb in the water.

His old friend had been consigned there by the hellfire of a Narzugon’s lance, struck down and killed and his soul sent down to hell by the curse of its infernal power. Just a few hours by the standards of the prime material plane would be all the time it took to complete Caleb’s transformation into a lemure and, from there, into a demon. But time passed differently between the planes, and while Jester wouldn’t have nearly enough time to get her hands on all the diamonds she needed given the state the rest of the Nein had been left in, Molly had enough leeway to try and render the entire time limit moot. 

Entire platoons of Merregon were doing drills along the vast, blasted plane, or else warring with one another at the behest of one or the other of the Archdevils. Stinking, suppurating masses of Nupperibo gathered around the banks of the Styx, and Abishai in all their chromatic colors patrolled the skies. Molly was pretty sure they’d spotted him - he wasn’t exactly subtle or hard to miss, a bright spark in a barren place. 

Three of the Nupperibo spotted Molly as he approached the river at a brisk, controlled walk. They were big but, fortunately, slow. Molly danced between their grasping hands without issue and cut them down, the light of his blades searing their skin and lighting them up like beacons. Which would probably bring at least one company of more trouble down on his head, but no matter. He couldn’t afford to be here long. 

Plunging his hands into the water of the Styx was one of the hardest things Molly had ever done - worse than dying, cold and cloying and  _wrong_  on every conceivable level. It was a tremendous effort to focus his will on clawing one soul out of the mire, to find one person in the endless, evil depths.

“Come on, Mister Caleb,” Molly murmured, hoping so much it hurt. “Come back to us.”  _Come back to me_. He still had so much of Arborea to show him when it truly was Caleb’s time to come and meet his goddess. 

Other souls called out to him, reached for him, making grand promises or using stolen voices. Maybe some of them deserved to be saved but gods above, that was so far beyond Molly’s scope of understanding as to be laughable. He had come here for one thing, one soul. He could do this much good, at least. 

“You’ve got people waiting for you and it’s terribly rude to  _keep_  them waiting. Get  _up_ , come  _on_.”

Until at last, after what felt like a minor eternity, Molly felt a familiar hand grasp his desperately and he  _heaved_  with all his might and pulled the twisted, broken soul of Caleb Widogast free of the Styx and onto solid ground with him, gasping and sputtering.  After what was probably only a couple of hours in the physical world, he was partially corrupted but still fundamentally human, still something that could be resurrected and stuck back in his body when Jester got her diamonds.

But time passed differently between the planes, and Molly didn’t even want to think about how Caleb had been down here from  _his_ perspective. Instead, as one of his most important people broke down in helpless, terrified, traumatized sobbing, Molly just shushed him gently and pulled him close. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he murmured. It wasn’t, none of this was, they didn’t really have  _time_  for a meltdown right now, but…just a minute. He could make sure they had a minute, at least. Gods knew Caleb deserved that. “I’m going to take care of you, okay? Let’s take this somewhere a little more comfortable, shall we?”

Eventually, he got Caleb to look at him, and Molly smiled as reassuringly as he could under the circumstances before setting to work getting him upright. A few more of the Nopperibo were starting to eye them hungrily, and Molly wasn’t confident that he could fight them off while sparing Caleb further damage. But they were slow, and all he really needed was to get them far enough away to get caught by the right kind of people. 

As they went along, Caleb pressed close to Molly with a lack of hesitation that Molly would have found gratifying once and just found heartbreaking now for so many reasons. Rationally, he knew it was only because he was glowing with the bright, celestial energies of Arborea where he’d been brought to dwell. It was the utter antithesis of everything that made up the Nine Hells, the only thing that let him survive down here without corruption. Of course Caleb was craving it. Molly only wished he had more to give. Maybe an archon or an eladrin could have cured the corruption entirely, but he was still only Mollymauk Tealeaf, tiefling and petitioner. So he did what he could.

And he wished this desperate, easy intimacy could have happened in another time when they both still drew breath. 

“H-How?” Caleb stammered, once he’d seemed to remember how to speak. And then, in little more than a whisper: “Wh-Why?”

He was shivering like a leaf in a gale. Molly fussily shrugged out of his coat bundled Caleb up in it, and pulled him close again. It seemed to help - the other spirit stopped shivering quite so painfully, even if Molly could still feel the heat of his blank, disbelieving stare on his face. 

“I have my ways,” Molly said, glaring at a blue Abishai overhead that looked like it was getting ideas. “I have my reasons. And one of those was that this is a shitty thing that I didn’t want to see happen to you, Caleb. Honestly, can’t that be enough for you?” 

If it wasn’t, Caleb still proved to not be in any fit state to argue the point. They simply carried on in silence for a little while longer, until Molly almost missed the sound of Caleb whispering, “I missed you” over the distant rumble of a Hellfire Tank. 

Molly kissed his temple and wished so much that he could do more to fix any of this. “Missed you, too.”

The man with the raven’s wings caught up to them just as the tank was starting to rumble towards them. Molly had been praying that he would, and so his prayers were answered as he felt the all-too-familiar presence coalesce behind him. “Mollymauk Tealeaf,” Vax’ildan drawled. “We  _really_  have to stop meeting like this.” 

Molly glanced back at him and smiled his most apologetic smile. “Mercy for a first offense?”

Vax snorted, then reached out to take both his and Caleb’s shoulders. “All right, I’ll play along for your friend. Yes, this is _absolutely_  your first offense.” And just like that, there was a moment of utter blackness slamming down around them, a sense of movement and wind, until Vax released his grip and both Molly and Caleb were left to tumble forward into the grass. 

“Welcome to Arborea,” Vax said, dusting off his hands. “Enjoy your stay.” 

“He won’t be here long,” Molly said flatly, dragging himself up to his hands and knees and going to check on Caleb. He had to hope that was the case but Vax was right - until Jester or Caduceus attempted and succeeded on a resurrection ritual, it had been determined that here was where Caleb belonged while he was dead. And that just made the echo of Molly’s heart skip a beat because he’d always, always thought that the one thing that could make the afterlife better was being here with  _them_.

And that was just a desperately selfish way to think, and probably pointless besides. One of the clerics would resurrect him soon and Caleb wouldn’t struggle and  _fail_ to claw his way back to life the way Molly had. 

Vax blew Molly a kiss and left them there to their own devices, his job done. “Are you going to get into trouble?” Caleb asked quietly, staring at the space where he’d been. 

“Nah,” Molly said, reasonably sure he wasn’t lying. “He’s a marshmallow at heart, that one.” He kissed the top of Caleb’s head and then helped him to his feet as carefully as he could. “Come on, up you go. Let’s get you settled.”  

Time passed strangely between the planes, and what would probably only be a few hours, a day at most, from the point of view of Caleb’s friends left Molly with enough time to care for Caleb in a way that had been denied him for much too long. They lingered together under the trees in the quiet, idyllic woods or wandered through fields of wildflowers, Caleb eating berries and fruits that Molly picked for him and pressed into his hands. Bit by bit, he grew less sickly and weak, healed by the food and the rich, loamy air and the positive energies that made up the very foundation of this plane. Celestial animals watched them with benign disinterest before going about their business. Other petitioners were occasionally visible in the distance going about their own business, enjoying their own eternities. As Caleb came alive again, he had questions, so many questions about how and why everything worked. Molly couldn’t even begin to answer all of them, but he tried and was happy that Caleb had come back to himself enough to care at all.

The weather in Arborea was as chaotic as could be, and at one point they stumbled, soaked and laughing, into a cave as a sudden rainstorm thundered down around them, only for it to end just as they made themselves comfortable. 

When Molly tried to stand up to leave the cave, Caleb pulled him down again with a surprising strength and kissed him and then kissed him again and Molly returned each brush of lips eagerly and two more rainstorms passed by overhead as they laid down and found solace in each other for a long, long while.

But all good things had to come to an end at some point, even here. That was the only way to ever give them any meaning. So as they were sitting together on a hill and watching a flock of brilliantly colored birds swirling and dancing overhead, Caleb suddenly went still, eyes going wide. Molly glanced at him, saw Caleb press his hands to his chest where a faint white glow was starting to emanate, and knew that he was hearing the voice of one of his friends calling him home. 

Their eyes met and damn him, bless him, but Molly saw Caleb hesitate. That wouldn’t do at all. He leaned forward to kiss the wizard soundly and cut off any foolish offers that might be coming. He felt Caleb hesitate, and then he felt him relax and accept what must be.

“I’ll tell the others you said hello?” Caleb whispered instead, as he started to fade. 

“Tell them that,” Molly said, smiling through the tears. “And that Beau’s new tattoo looks  _absolutely_  ridiculous on her.”

His old friend laughed, and then he was gone, the sound lingering in the air. Molly tried to commit it to his memory, hold it in his heart, as he was left to continue waiting there beneath the holy trees. 


End file.
